Narcissism and porn addiction

Wow this hurts, but I get it....

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/sex/2014/07/narcissism-porn-use-and-addiction/

 

" ..addictive sexual fantasies and behaviors provide not only sexual intensity and pseudo emotional connections, but control over that intensity and feeling of connection. This is especially true with Internet porn, where the user controls their entire experience and therefore remains emotionally safeand insulated from the highly interpersonal experience of shame. (We can’t feel shame in a vacuum; it requires other people.) So is it any wonder that narcissism and sex addiction typically travel in tandem?"

 

Yeah I think PMO is particularly sinister in this respect as it 'locks in' our emotional issues and we have little hope of making any progress with them while we stay addicted.... and yet it is the root cause of the addiction in the first place... gotta break those chains!

 

A really important topic because it can help people understand more about themselves and why they use porn. Narcissists are people who have developed a certain way of behaving to deal with emotional trauma.

 

yes indeed! numbed up we are unconscious at the wheel while we regurgitate our imaginary power dream over and over in our head unable to truly wake and take decisive action... i guess in my case i have awoken often enough, but the real world was to freaking scary and I prefered the safe claustrophobia of the dream...

...yeah that's exactly right... it took some time (years), courage and humility to finally own up to terms like "addict" and "narcissist" without either using them as an excuse to get defensive or beat myself up.... but owning up to these aspects in my personality, and finding the patience and self forgiveness trying to understand why they are there... is a big piece of the difference between 2 week and 2 month streaks for me I think

 

Hmmm, a C.S. Lewis quote comes to mind.............

'For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself…. And it is not only the faculty of love which is thus sterilized, forced back on itself, but also the faculty of imagination.

The true exercise of imagination, in my view, is (a) To help us to understand other people (b) To respond to, and, some of us, to produce, art. But it has also a bad use: to provide for us, in shadowy form, a substitute for virtues, successes, distinctions etc. which ought to be soughtoutside in the real world—e.g. picturing all I’d do if I were rich instead of earning and saving. Masturbation involves this abuse of imagination in erotic matters (which I think bad in itself) and thereby encourages a similar abuse of it in all spheres. After all, almost the main work of life is tocome out of our selves, out of the little, dark prison we are all born in. Masturbation is to be avoided as all things are to be avoided which retard this process. The danger is that of coming tolove the prison.'

 

Definitions are annoyingly fuzzy in psychology, or at least ever psychologist seems to define the terms differently. And these categories are just models to think of ways our minds work rather than anything that is truly real. That being said I would suggest that codependency seems like something that could be the result of adapting to narcissists growing up... I myself am similar: I am a "nice guy" (as in Robert A. Glover's "no more mr nice guy" book)... but for my self the mr. nice codependent stuff has revealed itself to simply be a way I try to manipulate ppl... I get hostile at myself, or passive aggressive towards them, if the manipulations does not produce results... it took me many years to figure this out...

Yes indeed, preening and fawning in front of the mirror is indeed not required! I think of it more as a coping mechanism for past hurts, that causes you to protect yourself with a false mask and makes you want to control your surroundings with your false self, the degree to which this becomes unconscious and/or successful determines how much hurt you cause yourself and others.... of course if you are not successful yet remain in this condition porn + fantasy has an almost inescapable allure...

Absolutely! It is not by chance that I put so much of my energy in classical music (the scripted sense makes me feel in control, I suppose I want the world to dance in my lap to my scripts)... and just the other day I fell into the trap of playing music for some new friends and approaching it the wrong way... making it more about me then about them and the music.... I was highly self monitoring.... being in fact satisfied with my new 'solidness' resulting from my nofap streak... but in doing that I could not deeply connect with either the music, myself or them.... it is such a fine line.... or at least it appears so for me.... because in truth the quality of my playing from a technical perspective is not that different... but if I am really 'in' the music, making it an expression of love for my audience rather than about me by trying to impress the shit out of them... a huge shift happens in the way they are able to access and appreciate the music.... I've noticed this many times... yet I continue to fall into the trap of trying to repeat that, or use that, to impress them rather than to freely give the music to them...

That is really remarkable to me, because it means that one thing I always denied to be true is actually true: it really does matter to be present, to 'see' a musical performance, not just in a party sense with popular music, but even in the boring rigid style classical performance.... because there is just something inescapably fascinating, that causes an audience to open it's ears and become present, when the performer is also completely 'present' fully experiencing a deeper consciousness and awareness while playing the music, if you replace the performer by someone who may play technically better but is absently or mechanically executing the music... then there is little to see... in truth I think this is why so much flash and pomp, lights, effects, noise and craziness is added to many popular music performances... as it's just too tempting to 'fake' the genuine musical experience with an overwhelming show...

And to come full circle (or am I spiraling ) this is what porn does as well, it's really romance that we want, the first mistake is to think eroticism, which still can be very beautiful, is the core of romance, and then the next mistake is that the core of eroticism is the mechanics of certain types of enhanced bodies faking certain acts of sex... it can be dazzling and distracting.... but it's not the real thing by a long shot